Posted on 04/03/2025 8:27:15 AM PDT by Red Badger
An Angara 1.2 rocket launches the Kosmos 2560 satellite, thought to be called EMKA-3, into orbit from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Oct. 15, 2022. Another trio in the Kosmos series — Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583 — launched in February 2025 and shortly thereafter released a mystery object into orbit. (Image credit: Roscosmos)
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A trio of secretive Russian satellites launched earlier this year has released a mysterious object into orbit, sparking interest among space trackers and analysts.
The three satellites, designated Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583, launched on a Soyuz-2.1V rocket from Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Feb. 2 (GMT). Since then, the satellites, whose purpose is unknown, have displayed interesting behavior, while in a near-polar orbit roughly 364 miles (585 kilometers) above Earth.
In March, the satellites appeared to be conducting potential proximity operations, or maneuvering close to other objects in space, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and spaceflight activity tracker.
Following this, the U.S. Space Force cataloged a new object in orbit, which was possibly released by Kosmos 2581 on March 18.
Russia has provided no details about the satellites and their mission. Many Kosmos missions are classified.
The released object could be used for a number of objectives, including military experiments, such as satellite inspection or target practice, testing technology for docking or formation flying. It may also be a scientific payload or even the result of an unintentional fragmentation, though this would usually result in numerous pieces of debris.
The Kosmos (or Cosmos) designation has been used by the Soviet Union and later Russia for a very wide range of military and scientific satellites since 1962. The satellites have covered a range of apparent uses, some of which are experimental, secret, or part of military programs, including early ASAT (anti-satellite) tests and satellite inspection, reconnaissance and electronic intelligence.
Satellite trios flying in formation in orbit is not unusual. Both the United States (for example, the Naval Ocean Surveillance System) and China (Yaogan) have launched numerous sets of satellite triplets, many of which are thought to be for electronic intelligence purposes, along with other satellite series.
However, it remains to be seen what the three Kosmos satellites and their new companion will get up to in orbit.
Time to revive “Rods from God”
Polar orbits are all about recon. It is a major Russian advantage in Ukraine.
Satellite imagery from overhead can be transmitted line-of-sight to analysis centers in St Petersburg essentially in real time.
US satellites imaging Ukraine have to store and wait for pass over NRO in Chantilly for the line-of-site downlink. It’s about 40 mins of delay.
There was a time when there were plans for uplink of low earth orbit satellites to geosync altitudes (23,000 miles) and then across to another geosync vehicle over Chantilly for downlink, but it’s still a few minutes of delay and in the old days, experiments were failing. Dunno if they ever perfected that. Sooo much easier to store and forward that I suspect they didn’t spend that money.
Sputnik all over again.
Thanks for the post. I was unaware of our delay vs the Russian smaller delay.
I still like the idea of “a big ball of goo” satellite.
It creates a large ball of polymer ‘goo’ that is then guided to collide with space junk, most of which is quite small, but moving at a high speed. Being able to change its course, through dozens or hundreds of orbits, each ball of goo snags thousands of known dangerous space debris. Then it collides with a few big pieces before burning it all up in the atmosphere.
Improvement of the old days of parachute drops from low orbit satellites.
How do you control the big ball of goo?..........
Wouldn’t Musk have a good time with this! Great idea.
The latency of the Starlink network is less than 100 milliseconds. Why not use that?
Okay let's use it for target practice.
The LEO satellites are moving very fast, with respect to any Starlink satellite. So you will take your image and then try to find a Starlink satellite that can deal with the doppler shift of the transfer signal, not to mention the fact it is encrypted.
Nah, I’d say no. The recon satellites were not designed with a presumption that Starlink is there, and will not even have the right frequency on their imagery downlink transmitter. All the content would be classified, too, which means the entire Starlink ground team would have to be cleared.
Nice idea, but nah, no way.
Orbital EMP device?
Starlink has launched satellites in polar orbits. While legacy satellites may never be able to integrate with starlink, seems like new ones can be designed to natively do so. The classified content can be handled through encryption. That’s what encryption is for.
Maybe an old cosmonaut’s ashes.................
Every Russian satellite is a secret Russian satellite,
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